Real, Symbolic, Imaginary (Lacan & Communication Theory)

see: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Self-Function-Psychoanalysis/dp/0801858178/ref...
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Science-Communicology-Phenomenology-Merleau-Ponty...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Lacan
• Jacques Lacan
• real
• symbolic
• imaginary
• psychology
• linguistics
• communication theory
• communicology
• consciousness
• experience
• attention
• thought
• philosophy

[notonewhit]

There is no nested relationship between RSI. Lacan portrays each as linked, any of the two registers are connected by the third. The real is non-substantial, a traumatic force that breaks up coherent unities of the imaginary and causes the symbolic to stumble. The imaginary is the realm of perception/mirror/gestalt, the symbolic is the register of the subject of desire and of the law. Lacan is difficult. Be careful, many scholars get him wrong. He defies simple summary. I’ll send you PM.

[Professoranton]

@notonewhit many thanks

[Censeo]

A great example of this is light/dark. Turn on a light switch and ask yourself, why isn't the light bulb brighter than what it is right now? Is it not because there is some darkness preventing it from being even brighter?

[BoStevoD]

Also, I like how Zizek puts it (paraphrasing): The Real is characterized by impossibility, the symbolic by absence, and the imaginary by fraud.

[BoStevoD]

The Real is not the totality of the space of inside and out, but the paradoxical space between them.

[mojomanhand]

Thanks man, I love it when you explain things with diagrams. I think I got most of it but I will go over it one more time and look up "Lacanian-ish theory" just to see if there is more to this. Keep up the great work!

[dewinthemorning]

I couldn't understand everything, but I think it's very important for people to understand what you say at 4:00 - abstractions are made, for which we have assigned nouns. Mostly these are things in the material world, but we make other abstractions as well, which are not things - love, mind, intellect, morality, theory, polotics,,, and so on. It's a mistake to imagine those as separately existing entities.

[HebaruSan]

So this is a theory of mind, not metaphysics? Is there a clinical/empirical basis to it? I have to admit that I gave up on Lacan after encountering his "graphs of sexuation" and failing to find an explanation of them of which I could make sense (and after I read that Chomsky quote calling Lacan an "amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan").

[niriop]

Excellent overview; tell me, do you have much of an opinion on Zizek's interpretation of Lacan?